Over 43.7 million refugees are displaced across the world. The United Nations declared today, June 20th, to be World Refugee Day (WRD) in order to honor the millions of men, women, and children forced to flee their homes in the face of violence and war. In 2000, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 55/76 to establish World Refugee coinciding with the previously established African Refugee Day. This resolution also noted the fiftieth anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which is the groundbreaking piece of legislation that defines who is a refugee, their rights and the legal obligations of states. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, uses this convention in order to carry out their mission of coordinating international efforts to assist all refugees as well as resolve refugee issues.
This year’s UNHCR’s World Refugee Day campaign has a focus on families stating, “One family torn apart by war is too many.” Their goal is to share refugee stories to allow people to make personal connections with these families. You can check out these stories through the UNHCR’s Dilemma series on YouTube: here. You can also get involved by raising awareness through social media as well as making donations. Angelina Jolie has added her voice to this campaign in the following PSA.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, has made a statement for WRD focusing on the plight of the millions of refugees in Syria. The 1.6 million registered refugees from Syria are cause for serious concern as Guterres states, “In all the years I have worked on behalf of refugees, this is the most worrying I have ever witnessed.” You can read his full statement here.
As our FYSOP vision for human rights has a distinctive global perspective, this day is extremely important to us. We have been in contact with various refugee resettlement agencies here in the Boston area to plan service. One of the really cool organizations we have been in touch with is Lutheran Social Services. We are planning to work with their New Americans program at their New Lands Farm as well as in their office with their ESL programs.
Hope you keep the millions of refugees in mind on this day and that you are getting excited to be able to give back in August.
HuRights Love,
Emily and Morgan
FYSOP Human Rights 